What is a “No Decision Deal” or a “Push” deal?

A “No Decision” (or “Push”) on the part of your prospects is your biggest competitor, taking 25 percent or more of the market from you on a consistent basis—and chances are you’re not doing anything about it. “No Decisions” are defined as customer opportunities where decision makers evaluated your solution, but decided not to purchase or have pushed the decision back to an unspecified date.

In these cases, the opportunity was real enough that your sales representative had it on their forecast, the customer was serious enough to spend time evaluating your solution and perhaps your competitors’ solutions, but something happened in the sales cycle—or something needed to happen that didn’t—that caused the potential customer to walk away. This scenario is happening right now in nearly a third of the opportunities your sales representatives are pursuing.

A “No Decision” analysis reveals specifically what was missing that caused decision makers to opt to do nothing. It exposes the obstacles that led your customers to decide to forgo or postpone a purchase, and it identifies what needed to happen in order for the deal to successfully close as forecast.

This empirical data is critical for you and your organization if you intend to improve your win rate versus your “No Decision” competitor.

Twenty to Thirty Percent of Forecast Deals End in “No Decision”

“No Decision” analysis targets the actionable portion of the Client Cycle—the purchase decision (see below). As much as a third of your target market falls into the “No Decision” category. Analyzing and understanding the factors that lead to no decisions is a critical first step in addressing this issue in your sales efforts.

The Client Cycle

Keep in mind that this statistic is looking at just those deals that the sales reps had on their forecast with a high expectation of the deal closing. If we examined all deals that entered the pipeline, the percentage of deals that end in “No Decision” would be much higher.

The opportunity to improve in this area is immense and can lead to a significant competitive advantage for those organizations that implement programs to understand not only why they are winning and losing, but why decision makers are opting not to purchase at this time.

Benefits of Analyzing “No Decision” Opportunities:

• Increase sales by 10 percent or more
• Identify the root causes of your “No Decisions”
• Better understand what is happening in the customers’ decision making process when they decide to pass on the purchase decision
• Identify the characteristics of “No Decisions” early in the sales cycle to make better “Go/No-go” decisions
• Identify the specific sales training that needs to be applied in order to overcome root causes of “No Decision Deals”
• Identify the marketing collateral and messaging enhancements that can help reduce the number of “No Decision Deals”

Just How Much Are “No Decisions” Costing You?

The simple answer is that “No Decisions” are likely costing you about 50% of the revenue you’re generating in new business today. If you’re like most B2B companies, you probably win about 40 to 45% of the deals you pursue. To figure out the cost of “No Decisions” on your business, multiply the new business revenue you’ve done this year by 50%. This number represents the market share that is being left on the table as a direct result of not understanding the root causes of your “No Decisions.”

For example, if you did $50 million in new business this year, the size of your “No Decision” revenue losses is approximately $25 million. Understanding what you need to be doing to convert that $25 million of missed opportunity into recognized revenue is the primary objective of a “No Decision” analysis.

Implementing a program to systematically analyze the root causes of your “No Decision Deals” will lead to a significant return on investment as you understand how to overcome the things that are causing decision makers to pass or delay the purchase decision.

What’s Included in a “No Decision” Analysis

Every Primary Intelligence “No Decision” analysis program includes the following:

• BI Software & Dashboards: Access to on-demand, browser-based business intelligence software solutions
• Opportunity Assessment: A complete analysis of the customer’s specific needs and how well your solutions and the competition’s solutions addressed those needs
• Competitive Intelligence: An objective analysis of the competitors’ actions, strategies, tactics, and solutions as told from the decision makers’ perspectives
• Decision Maker Assessment: In-depth interviews with decision makers to assess their perceptions, understand their decision process, and identify their specific decision criteria
• Missing Requirements: Identify the root causes of the prospects’ decision to not purchase a solution
• Predictive Analytics: A statistical modeling process that identifies the decision criteria that have the most impact on purchase decisions

What kind of ROI can I expect?

Through the implementation of a program to analyze your “No Decisions”, Primary Intelligence can help each of your sales reps turn at least one opportunity into a win that would have moved into the “No Decision” category without a “No Decision” analysis program.

• How many sales reps do you have?
• What is your average deal size?

Multiply the number of sales reps you have by your average deal size and you will have an idea of what to expect from this program.

Software Delivery

Efficient, comprehensive reporting of the findings of your “No Decision” analysis program to sales representatives, sales management, and marketing and product managers is key to the success of the program. By using Primary Intelligence’s on-demand, browser-based software solution, your users will have instant access to the sales, marketing, and competitive intelligence they need to implement better strategies and tactics and convert more deals into wins.